Does this Darkness have a Name?
by Selene Romanov
Summary: My idea of what happens after the school shooting, starting with Dan's in Chapter 1. Each chapter will be a different character's pov. Plz R&R. ON HIATUS.
1. Dan

**Disclaimer: No $$$ is being made, situations and characters are borrowed.**

**My ideas of why Dan did what he did. Like it/hate it, let me know, i will be writing more character povs' before next week's eppy.

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**Does this Darkness have a Name? **

_Camera flashes to _**Dan**'_s face upon killing his brother in cold blood. _

**Is it your name?**

I may have used another person's tool of murder to kill you but I have to wonder how long it was in coming. When did it start? This ball of hate burning inside of me. You've always been there like a faithful dog, especially back in high school, always lurking in the background of my life.

I heard your speech about buying the gun and making the plan, but you never used, so I have to wonder why? **What stopped you. **I was the star in high school, everyone loved me, I was captain of the basketball team, dating the head cheerleader, King of my world.

Then high school ended and I was just another guy. I got my girlfriend pregnant, broke things off with her and left her. **Alone.** I made a decision that I always **regret**, I was going to go back to her, but my newest girlfriend told me I was going to be a father, so I decided not to make the same mistake twice. Of course, there were other reasons, but I stuck with Deb and my second son Nathan.

Moving back to Tree Hill, I had to watch you from a distance as you took the role in my first son's life that I wanted to take so badly. I was jealous of you for sixteen years because you were a father to my son. But there was another thing you wanted that you never got. **Her.**

My first love and she never loved you back until now. It was something constant, she thought of you as a friend, her best friend. I preferred to think of you as her lapdog.

I remember the night she left for Italy, you kissed her, change appeared on the horizon, when she came back, things might have changed. But then **fate** intervened and a nasty habit you couldn't shirk caught you red handed and she froze you out.

I watched in detached glee as she broke your heart again. But somewhere inside of me, I almost felt for you, but then I reminded myself, you'd always had it so easy.

There was one night that I remember vividly I try to block out with alcohol, the night she came to thank me for acknowledging our son. Having her in my arms brought back so many feelings, it felt like I had **gone back **seventeen years into the past, where we were together, in love forever.

I remember when you proposed to her and she said **No**. How do you deal with it? You sleep with my wife, who I was on the verge of divorcing. I have to wonder if I ever really loved Deb or if it was her money. I suppose at some point, I did love her, but you never forget your first love and she was mine.

Revenge is a dish best served **cold**. I plotted and planned, to twist and break and wreak havoc on your life. I hired Jules to gain entry to your heart and make you love her, she succeeded, but fell in love with you **in return**. The guilt ate her up inside, I twisted the screws tighter and tighter wanting her to break. Wanting **you** to be in pain, so I could feel alive.

What kind of person am **I**? The last year has been kind of a blur, I kept you close in hoping to learn more of how I could hurt you. Brother, blood is thicker than water and yet I always sought ways to make you drown in your own pain.

The last straw was thinking you'd had killed me, the evidence was there, but you mocked me. Your eyes were empty of malicious intent, but something lurked there, secrets that I didn't know and wanted to discover.

**Forever and Always**, you are my brother, my protector in childhood, but things changed when I grew up and was able to protect myself. I have to wonder when my love for you turned to hate, watered by your acts of betrayal.

**I killed you**, I pulled the trigger. Watching you finally get everything in your life when I had nothing in mine just triggered something inside of me and I did it. You're dead, your eyes look at me, void of life.

I'm going to hell, I know for sure, I've taken a human life, I'm a murderer, but no one knows and no one will know. The demon inside of me smirks in satisfaction, the humanity inside of me cries for the final loss of innocence. I've finally become the monster that I've been accused of so many times.

I hear students coming down the hallway, almost in sight, wiping my prints off the gun quickly, I place it near Jimmy.

Around the corner, Nathan **thank god my son is alive**, Haley **his wife** _I use the term loosely_ and others. They stop and Haley screams, "Keith." Nathan stops her from running over to him.

Looking up at me for a split second frozen in time, she stares and then turns sobbing into Nathan's arms. Police swarm inside, pulling all the survivors outside.

My last look is at Keith, lying on the ground, frozen in death. His usually lively eyes are dull and lifeless.


	2. Brooke

**Short I know, all I could come up with for now. More v. soon.

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I was drowning in sheer terror, the last thing I remember of calmness was walking with Peyton arm-in-arm down the hall. Looking up, the twisted metal, the endless hole of pain aimed straight at me, at Peyton. Terror froze me, I ducked, shattering glass hit me. I fell to the floor, people ran past me, over me, around me like ants scurrying in their hole. Running from the threat, it was freaky. I ran outside and in all the chaos, I lost Peyton.

Tears blurred my sight, until I saw Lucas, my one and only and forever. Crying I told him that I'd lost Peyton inside and that someone had been shooting up the school. I saw Nathan push past Whitey and head for the school and I saw Lucas follow him.

"Lucas, no," I cried out. He looked back at me, "I'll be right back Brooke." His eyes pleaded with me, he was going to save Peyton and follow his brother. Stupid, a little voice nagged inside of me.

Pushed on the bus by Whitey, my last glimpse of him was his blue shirttails disappearing in the silent maze of school. My perfect outfit was creased by the shoving of the boys as they craned to get a better look out the bus window.

Police were now converging on the school, setting up their tactical teams. I wept for Peyton, Lucas and everyone else.

Sitting in the school gym, where I'd been happy so many times. Now it was a refugee for survivors, parents looking for missing children. My parents weren't here to claim me, because of course, they're in L.A. Can you see me mentally rolling my eyes?

I remember now in cold memory, sitting on the bleachers, listening to the manipulative iciness of the reporter. She dared accuse me of being ashamed because I never spent any time with Jimmy Edwards in the last 4 years. Just because I don't know everyone doesn't make me a bad person. If I knew every Pam, Beth and Sherry well then I would be a more accomplished person, I imagine? But I'm not, I'm Brooke Davis, student body president, captain of the Raven cheerleaders and best girlfriend of Lucas Scott and Peyton Sawyer.

That is who I am and what I do and it's nothing to be ashamed of. Peyton is shot in the leg and is currently on her way to the hospital in an ambulance, she's unconscious. Lucas is with his mom who is currently inconsolable because Keith was shot during the chaos with Jimmy.

I'm all alone, on the outside looking in.


	3. Haley

**Disclaimer: see Ch. 1**

**short i know, but all i could get out, harder now to think of the characters reaction, since so many unexpected things could happen. **

**Haley

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Seriously all I remember is hearing the ringing of the gunshot over and over in my head. The knowledge that someone had been hit or killed sat with me, and the fact that it had happened so close to where we were in the school just terrified.

I have been scared of a lot of things, scared of losing Nathan, of being away from him when I was on tour. Especially when I was on tour with Chris, scared of not succeeding when people believed in me. I remember that night when I was supposed to go on alone for the first time in front of so many people.

It's hard to remember what exactly happened and why it happened, all I know is that Jimmy was scared and feeling rejected and hurt by his peers. I knew him as a kid and I remember a happier kid that was fun to hang out with.

But we drifted apart and things changed, I married Nathan and Lucas transitioned over to the basketball team. Things change, people change. How does bringing a gun to school and shooting people fix your problems, I wouldn't know.

I can only think that in his head, it must have seemed right, but to me it felt wrong. To bring a gun to school and endanger the lives of so many people is horrible.

I could taste blood in my mouth from biting the inside of my cheek, I may have appeared calm on the outside but inside I was quivering like a leaf in a storm, vulnerable and scared.

What happened, really made me think about life and how I've been living mine. I have to learn to take more chances, sure my life has seemed risky so far, I've done a lot for a young person, but as people we are bound by conformity, society expects us to bend and hold back at will.

Freedom is overrated, people preach about it, but no one is really free to be themselves. Jimmy is an example of that. He wanted to be ignored and invisible and instead was picked on and ridiculed. I started high school as a quiet tutor girl and will end it as a married cheerleader, cliches abound.

To be truly free is to be yourself, lying to yourself is to hide and let others walk all over you. Jimmy tried to change that with a gun and look where he ended up. Dead. I know I'm being harsh, but he made a choice and his life ended because of it, maybe that's what he wanted. He talked of trying to kill himself before and not succeeding. What he wanted was to be heard and seen and he got his wish, we will always remember him.

I just want this nightmare to be over. Is it so selfish for me to want to go home and cuddle up with Nathan and make love to reaffirm that we are alive. We're alive and free and can do things that are not bound by society, we're being threatened with a gun, our lives are not in the hands of a confused teenager. We are free in mind, body, soul and heart. I choose life and I choose love and I choose Nathan.


	4. Rachel

Sorry for delay, more soon.

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My heart has been broken, I have failed. I never imagined that this could happen. I truly loved him, I did. Watching him from the sidelines, she always had his attention. He was my knight in shining armor. I never had him. I thought it would be funny to release her thoughts to the world. I wouldn't be affected since I hadn't attended this school last year. Stupid mistake on my part.

People are dead because of what I did.

I'm a monster.

Lucas is scarred forever by the murder of his uncle shot by his best friend who then committed suicide and killed himself.

Brooke is a babbling brook of sympathy. She looked human to me for the first time ever. I could see her humanity emerging out of the shallow bubble that I've placed her.

Peyton was shot by a stray bullet and her life hangs in the balance or so I've heard.

Lives have been changed forever because of what I did. I'm the only person who knows, if I told anyone, I would…could be charged as an accessory to murder…or something worse.

Nathan's face of anger and hatred was released to the world and he let Haley have the full brunt of it, but their love conquered the barriers and they are stronger for it. They survived, but others did not.

What I don't know only kills me. It almost did. Locked in that room with him for hours on end, my mind racing over and over the same thought that I released the time capsule and this tidal wave of hatred from Jimmy that stormed the school.

If I was invisible and knew everything. I would know that Brooke cried and fell apart in front of a flagpole, she dug deep inside of herself and pulled out her courage. I would know that in her final moments, Peyton confessed her love, friendly or otherwise to Lucas and kissed him. Lucas either felt a connection to her, emotional, less or more. I do know that love makes us stronger and hatred fuels a passion that threatens to consume us all.

This year at Tree Hill High, I've been popular, loved, worshipped, alone, hated and beaten. Popular with the best, worshipped by all the guys, loved by all, hated by Brooke and others, alone when in a crowd with people and beaten by the love that transcends life.

For my yearbook entry, I will put, "Darkness is my other name, loneliness is my companion, love is my enemy, worship is a falsehood, hate is a lover and popularity is overrated." No if I put that, I would be known as the freaky girl, so in my mind that will be my yearbook entry.

Reality check, I am Rachel, hot and popular cheerleader, loved by none and hated by all.

Hated by all that somehow know what I did. I will be judged for it and when I am, my place in the nine circles of hell will be reserved.

Blistering fires of ice will smother me and the gentle wave of darkness will seduce me to sleep eternally.


End file.
